Alice Meynell

As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver!
O my light, I am dark but fair,
    Black but fair.

Shine, Earth loves thee! And then shine
And be loved through thoughts of mine.
All thy secrets that I treasure
I translate them at my pleasure.
I am crowned with glory of thine.
    Thine, not thine.

I make pensive thy delight,
And thy strong gold silver-white.
Though all beauty of nine thou makest,
Yet to earth which thou forsakest
I have made thee fair all night,
    Day all night.

In my thought I see you stand with a path on either hand,
-Hills that look into the sun, and there a river'd meadow-land.
And your lost voice with the things that it decreed across me thrills,
    When you thought, and chose the hills.

'If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain.
With a singing soul for music's sake, I climb and meet the rain,
And I choose, whilst I am calm, my thought and labouring to be
    Unconsoled by sympathy.'

But how dared you use me so? For you bring my ripe years low
To your child's whim and a destiny your child-soul could not know.
And that small voice legislating I revolt against, with tears.
    But you mark not, through the years.

'To the mountain leads my way. If the plains are green to-day,
These my barren hi...

A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
    With a resounding call!

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries -
Between what warming seas and conquering skies -
    And fold, and fall?

She walks - the lady of my delight -
    A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
    She guards them from the steep.
She feeds them on the fragrant height,
    And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,
    Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night
    The chastest stars may peep.
She walks - the lady of my delight -
    A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,
    Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
    She has her soul to keep.
She walks - the lady of my delight -
    A shepherdess of sheep.

                Three times have I beheld
    Fear leap in a babe’s face, and take his breath,
                Fear, like the fear of eld
    That knows the price of life, the name of death.

                What is it justifies
    This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,
                The terror in those eyes
    When only eyes can speak-they are so young?

                Not yet those eyes had wept.
    What does fear cherish that it locks so well?
                What fortress is thus kept?
    Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?

                And pain in the poor child,
    Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb
                In the poor beast, and wild
    In the old decorous man, caught, overcome?

           ...

    Whose is the speech
That moves the voices of this lonely beech?
Out of the long West did this wild wind come -
Oh strong and silent! And the tree was dumb,
    Ready and dumb, until
The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.

    Two memories,
Two powers, two promises, two silences
Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves
Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves
    The purpose of the past,
Separate, apart - embraced, embraced at last.

    "Whose is the word?
Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?"
"Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!"
"Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,
    Thou visitant divine."
"O thou my Voice, the word was thine."
    "Was thine."

                "A riddling world!" one cried.
    "If pangs must be, would God that they were sent
    To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside
                The holy innocent!"

                But I, "Ah no, no, no!
    Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall
    For a child’s agony; not a martyr’s woe;
                Not these, not these appal.

                "Not docile motherhood,
    Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;
    Not shedding of the unoffending blood;
                Not little joy grown less;

                "Not all-benign old age
    With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints
    And still pursues; not the vile heritage
                Of sin’s disease in saints;

                "Not thes...

                            TO SHAKESPEARE

                Longer than thine, than thine,
    Is now my time of life; and thus thy years
    Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine.
    O how ignoble this my clasp appears!

                Thy unprophetic birth,
    Thy darkling death: living I might have seen
    That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth.
    O first, O last, O infinite between!

                Now that my life has shared
    Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice,
    To what all-vain embrace shall be compared
    My lean enclosure of thy paradise?

                To ignorant arms that fold
    A poet to a foolish breast?    The Line,
    That is not, with the world within its hold?
    So, days with days,...

Thou art not dead, O sweet lost melody,
    Sung beyond memory,
When golden to the winds this world of ours
    Waved wild with boundless flowers;
Sung in some past when wildernesses were,-
    Not dead, not dead, lost air!
Yet in the ages long where lurkest thou,
    And what soul knows thee now?
Wert thou not given to sweeten every wind
    From that o'erburdened mind
That bore thee through the young world, and that tongue
    By which thou first wert sung?
Was not the holy choir the endless dome,
    And nature all thy home?
Did not the warm gale clasp thee to his breast.
    Lulling thy storms to rest?
And is the June air laden with thee now,
    Passing the summer-bough?
And is the dawn-wind on a lonely sea
    Balmy with thoughts of thee?<...

Thou who singest through the earth,
    All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
    Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
    Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
    Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.

Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
    Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store

    Across what calm of tropic seas,
            ’Neath alien clusters of the nights,
    Looked, in the past, such eyes as these?
            Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!

    The generations fostered them;
            And steadfast Nature, secretwise-
    Thou seedling child of that old stem-
            Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.

    Was it a century or two
            This lovely darkness rose and set,
    Occluded by grey eyes and blue,
            And Nature feigning to forget?

    Some grandam gave a hint of it-
            So cherished was it in thy race,
    So fine a treasure to transmit
            In its perfection to thy face.

    Some father to some mother’s breast
            Entrusted it, unknowi...

Oh, not more subtly silence strays
    Amongst the winds, between the voices,
Mingling alike with pensive lays,
    And with the music that rejoices,
Than thou art present in my days.

My silence, life returns to thee
    In all the pauses of her breath.
Hush back to rest the melody
    That out of thee awakeneth;
And thou, wake ever, wake for me.

Full, full is life in hidden places,
    For thou art silence unto me.
Full, full is thought in endless spaces.
    Full is my life. A silent sea
Lies round all shores with long embraces.

Thou art like silence all unvexed
    Though wild words part my soul from thee.
Thou art like silence unperplexed,
    A secret and a mystery
Between one footfall and the next.

Most dear pa...

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
    Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
    But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i' the wind and rain.

Even as to him who plays that idle air,
    It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
    Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.

Thou song of songs!-not music as before
    Unto the outward ear;
My spirit sings thee inly evermore,
    Thy falls with tear on tear.
I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.

Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
    Is there no pulse to move thee,
At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
    And falling tears above thee,
O musi...

The Art of Painting had in the Primitive years looked with the light, not towards it.    Before Tintoretto’s date, however, many painters practised shadows and lights, and turned more or less sunwards; but he set the figure between himself and a full sun.    His work is to be known in Venice by the splendid trick of an occluded sun and a shadow thrown straight at the spectator.

Tintoretto’s thronged "Procession to Calvary" and his "Crucifixion," incidentally named, are two of the greatest of his multitude of works in Venice.

                Master, thy enterprise,
    Magnificent, magnanimous, was well done,
    Which seized, the head of Art, and turned her eyes-
    The simpleton-and made her front the su...

    Given, not lent,
    And not withdrawn - once sent -
This Infant of mankind, this One,
Is still the little welcome Son.

    New every year,
    New-born and newly dear,
He comes with tidings and a song,
The ages long, the ages long.

    Even as the cold
    Keen winter grows not old;
As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,
And spring in the familiar green;

    Sudden as sweet
    Come the expected feet.
All joy is young, and new all art,
And He, too, Whom we have by heart.

Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,
    Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,
Lack, or remember! whose warm pulses beat
    With love of thine own kind;

Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,
    Unshrined on this high-way,
O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee,
    Thou rood of every day!

So humble things Thou hast borne for us, O God,
Left'st Thou a path of lowliness untrod?
Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden.
For we endure the tender pain of pardon,-
One with another we forbear. Give heed,
Look at the mournful world Thou hast decreed.
The time has come. At last we hapless men
Know all our haplessness all through. Come, then,
Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven,
Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven.

"You never attained to Him?" "If to attain
    Be to abide, then that may be."
"Endless the way, followed with how much pain!"
    "The way was He."